The looters we've seen on TV are opportunists. They saw the hurricane as a once in a lifetime chance to do what they could while no one watched. Not the people foraging for food and drink, but the ones taking expensive electronics, clothes and cars. In the political arena, some pundits are doing something similar. They're taking cover behind the horror of the catastrophe to score rhetorical points that wouldn't stand scrutiny otherwise.
Nicholas Kristof one of these. See this NY Times column, as he excoriates the President for "ongoing reluctance or ineptitude in helping the poorest Americans."
The administration might be inept, (which one wasn't?) but Kristof offers no evidence that the administration purposefully abandoned anyone because of economic status. That's the kind of accusation that is accepted by the most rabid critics, but thoughtful people will need some kind of evidence. Kristof offers this:
Under Mr. Bush, the national infant mortality rate has risen for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.So in some ways the poor children evacuated from New Orleans are the lucky ones because they may now get checkups and vaccinations. Nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations. On immunizations, the U.S. ranks 84th for measles and 89th for polio.
[...]
[T]he U.S. - particularly under the Bush administration - has systematically cut people out of the social fabric by redistributing wealth from the most vulnerable Americans to the most affluent.It's not just that funds may have gone to Iraq rather than to the levees in New Orleans; it's also that money went to tax cuts for the wealthiest rather than vaccinations for children.
The idea that tax cuts resulted in a lack of vaccine funding is risible. In fact, other critics point out the Bush tax cuts weren't 'funded' at all, in the sense that spending was not cut.
What's more funding for the Federal Dept. of Health and Human Services was increased by 21.4% in the first three years of the Bush administration, hardly what you can call neglect for the poor. (Source here, pdf file) Kristof's premise is baseless.
More from Kristof:
None of this is to suggest that there are easy solutions for American poverty. As Ronald Reagan once said, "We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won." But we don't need to be that pessimistic - in the late 1990's, we made real headway. A ray of hope is beautifully presented in one of the best books ever written on American poverty, "American Dream," by my Times colleague Jason DeParle.So the best monument to the catastrophe in New Orleans would be a serious national effort to address the poverty that afflicts the entire country. And in our shock and guilt, that may be politically feasible. Rich Lowry of The National Review, in defending Mr. Bush, offered an excellent suggestion: "a grand right-left bargain that includes greater attention to out-of-wedlock births from the Left in exchange for the Right's support for more urban spending." That would be the best legacy possible for Katrina.
While we still feel the emotion from Katrina we can set aside reason to come up with a "national effort" to address poverty. We've had a national effort for generations now. Kristof notes that poverty decreased in during the 90's and increased in the 00's. Painfully obvious to most everyone else is that those levels correspond to the performance of the economy during those times, and not to federal efforts to combat poverty.